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Thursday, September 18, 2008

The man I love called today and told me of some distressing, as yet mild, symptoms he's experiencing. My concern for him is tangible, yet I am far away and do not want to give more power to negative thoughts than they're due. I sent him a text message full of positive statements to help him feel strong, healthy, loved, and in control of his outcomes. I pushed 'send' and thought about the words I'd sent and how true they felt. I was grounded.

I try never to blow up the magnitude of health aversions, but to tread thoughtfully on the ground of real symptoms, life style, personal history. I see it as counter productive to worry and fret and internet diagnose in a world already so filled with negative energy and treating symptoms rather than people. I never want to over react or be over concerned but I worry a lot that I might under play something important in my efforts, it's an important balance. My Mom and Dad were in a motorcycle accident Tuesday evening. They are, thankfully, ok. Mom fractured her right wrist and they're both shaken, bruised, and worn, but they had the same lucky light with them as I did the night I crashed my bike. My Mom is irritated with her family's continued asking if they can help. "If you want to help" she says, "just come over and help."This time around with Devyn I don't think much about our age difference. His uniqueness and individuality is not scary to me anymore, but encouraging. Through the shit we've been through I've learned more about myself in a year than I have in the nearly three I've been in Chicago, and learned even more about loving, giving, accepting, and forgiving. When I dropped the positive statements around him, hoping he'd take them to heart, I felt that same golden healing light I always feel when I'm close to the heart of my matter; they were truths. I wasn't saying something to someone I cared about hoping to make them feel better. I was saying somethings to someone I love because he needs to hear them and remember his strength when he might be feeling weak. I'm going to Mom and Dad's after work tomorrow to make them healthy comforting dinner and to do the same there.

Friday, September 12, 2008

These last few weeks at work have been mostly about looking busy while really "successfully pissing the day away", as my co-worker put it. This does make me feel some guilt and some paranoia that 'they're' going to catch on to me and fire my ass sooner than later, but I can't seem to care. I can't seem to muster up the strength to get to work on time, to be proactive at my desk, to give a shit about making money for other people. Sure, sure, we're doing good. We help surgical patients by helping surgeons, ya ya ya, I know. All I can think about with regularity are sex, writing, and my new diet (which isn't really a diet so much as trying to integrate exercise and balance into my every day life). I have so much writing out there, and I spend more than a few hours a week doing it for free, probably making other people money in the process. This shit is starting to make me itch. It's stupid. I'm broke, can't pay the bills every month, and yet I'm giving several of my assets away for free. I don't know where the button to make me work harder after hours is. I struggle between wanting to go home and write and look for ways to make myself some money, but I also want to go out and find people to meet and have sex with (or go on the 'net and find people...). A little fear is growing in my belly that this complete lack of interest in the job I have that's helping keep me housed is going to really bite me in the ass and cause misery. A bigger fear is growing in that same belly of mine that this complete lack of motivation (and unwillingness to sleep only 3 hours a night) is going to continue until all of the sudden I realize, at age 45 or something, the following:

Thursday, September 4, 2008

I'm naked, it's raining, the big three are letting me down: Sex, Money, Work. Another thing too, I have to fess up. Yes, this concerns Devyn. I've been clandestinely rekindling something with him, slowly, for the last month at least. I've been talking more and more to him, I've been working with myself and him to understand my boundaries and where I'm at. I'm circling down into the familiar depression tinged with desperation but have kept my feet planted pretty well so far and that, at least, feels really good.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

This is one of those moments when I should take the time to sort it out before coming to the keyboard. It's one of those dozens upon countless dozens of moments when the magnitude of injustice perpetrated by this country (and its corporate backers) upon United States citizens pulls me into an eddy of disgust. The best way for me to break myself down and reach the points my rants are based on is to look at what happened leading up to it.

Amy Goodman, Nicole Salazar, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Democracy Now were arrested yesterday afternoon while filming the riot police in St. Paul, MN. I heard yesterday that 2 of her producers (Salazar & Kouddous) had been arrested and that she'd clamored up a fence to try and interview the arresting officers. I learned this morning, when I checked the website, that she'd been arrested in her attempt to get to those officers. The footage of Salazar being taken down by riot cops (ration 5:1), which was self shot, is totally unnerving. Watch it on YouTube, or, if you're easily upset just rate it 5 of 5 stars and up the chance that a "Major Media Outlet" will take notice and report it somewhere.

One of my favorite things about Democracy Now! are the breaks between stories. When watching the breaks on the web version of the show you get to listen to soul or folk or fight songs in the background of video footage of riots, injustice, war zones, neglected areas, etc. It's more uplifting than it sounds.The first break today had a Leonard Cohen song about democracy playing behind images of full gear riot forces marching on civilians. It just gets me going. I've spoken of riot porn before.

I came home after a long day being busy and "responsible" and turned the broadcast on again since I didn't get to finish it at work. While I sat on the floor, eating raw garlic to eradicate my head cold, making another impossible budget, footage of the aftermath of Katrina played and talk of the way Gustav was dealt with went on. I wrote down my monthly bills, other debts due, other expected upcoming expenditures. The column was long. I wrote down my monthly income; a terrifyingly short column. In the end I noticed that this first half of the month require that I make another $400 just to be in decent standing and still get to eat/keep my plasma (the stuff in my blood, not a teevee...in case you wondered). I sighed, set my graph paper and calculator aside and cut up some cantaloupe. Where's that going to come from? What plausible options do I even have?

Sometimes I feel like I'm looking down a very long barrel of a very powerful gun and I panic, I don't know what options are available to me besides ducking, running, screaming for help...Democracy Now! played on. No brilliant ideas popped into mind. No motivation to continue my quest for income for more hours this day spurred. Now they were showing images of the Iraq Veterans Against War.

"JACQUIE SOOHEN: As the march ended and veterans gathered back on the Capitol steps, some overwhelmed with emotion, we were reminded once again that behind each of these men and women in uniform is a powerful story. Former Abu Ghraib prison guard, Benjamin Thompson, shared his story with Democracy Now!

BENJAMIN THOMPSON: One of my prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a place where you saw all those photographs come out—you [don't] know the half of it. Most of our people didn’t live in those cell blocks. Most of the people lived outdoors. They’re killed by enemy insurgents, in our camps...

We had ten-year-old boys in my camps. We had an eighty-year-old blind man in my camp. They were killed by enemy fire, because we did not protect them when they were in our custody. They were not worth protecting. The generals that came to my base came with three helicopters apiece. And when they left, they took them with them.

We were giving them food that made them sick. We were giving them water that gave them kidney stones. We weren’t supplying them with medical attention. They were dying from lack of heart medication that they had been on for twenty years. You never heard about this, ever, because of the [expletive] photographs. The Department of Defense focused all of the attention upon those atrocious acts committed by war criminals, my brother and sister military policemen. And then everything else that happened at that prison, to the other 95 percent of those prisoners, went unreported in the media. This is not OK."

It's all so overwhelming. It's all I can do to keep my own small corner of this country to keep from crumbling around me. At times like this I wonder why I even try. I wonder why I don't let it crumble around me. Why don't I let the debt wash over me, take everything it can and then walk off into the hazy horizon to do what I can with what I really have: my legs, what's on my back, my conscience, and my creativity.

I wonder, and then I acquiesce. I think that both of them are pitiful options and that I have to do my best with what I have and pick a route to stick on, at least to stay sane. The route I've chosen is the more beaten path right now. I am learning about goals and that there are steps to take to get to them. I am learning how not beat myself up for not being able to do it all. I am learning to read the fine print and the interest rate and I'm learning how to fly my freak flag - you fucken heard it - learning how to fly my flag made up of sex, justice, linguistics, heart, seeds, nutrition, and muscle no matter where I'm stationed in the fight.

And to think, I could have spent my night trying to write the best online dating ad ever.